SecondHands: A Collaborative Maintenance Robot for Automated Warehouses. Implications for the Industry and the Workforce

Automation is key to increasing productivity and competitiveness of businesses in nearly every modern industry. However, industrial machines require regular maintenance to be productive and reliable. Regularly servicing automated systems is costly, difficult and time consuming. A robotic solution could reduce the costs while simplifying the maintenance work. The EU project SecondHands proposes a prototype collaborative robot able to assist a technician while working in a real world industrial environment. The robot can infer from its multimodal sensory inputs the assistance required and proactively help. To be able to deliver help, the robot’s AI has to process large volumes of training data whose collection is labour intensive. A new profession might be needed to produce and collect the data needed for calibration and training the robot to help. Additionally, an intuitive communication protocol between human and robot has to be established for feasible and convenient interaction.